Moral Understandings

A Feminist Study in Ethics

Margaret Urban Walker

Walker's book proposes a view of morality and an approach to ethical theory which uses the critical insights of feminism and race theory to rethink the epistemological and moral position of the ethical theorist, and how moral theory is inescapably shaped by culture and history. This second, revised edition contains a new preface, a substantive postscript to Chapter 1 about "the subject of moral philosophy"; the addition of a new chapter on the importance of emotion in practices of responsibility; and the addition of an afterword, which responds to critics of the book.

Moral Understandings

A Feminist Study in Ethics

Second Edition

Margaret Urban Walker

Description

This is a revised edition of Walker's well-known book in feminist ethics first published in 1997. Walker's book proposes a view of morality and an approach to ethical theory which uses the critical insights of feminism and race theory to rethink the epistemological and moral position of the ethical theorist, and how moral theory is inescapably shaped by culture and history. The main gist of her book is that morality is embodied in "practices of responsibility" that express our identities, values, and connections to others in socially patterned ways. Thus ethical theory needs to be empirically informed and politically critical to avoid reiterating forms of socially entrenched bias. Responsible ethical theory should reveal and question the moral significance of social
differences. The book engages with, and challenges, the work of contemporary analytic philosophers in ethics.

Moral Understandings has been influential in reaching a global audience in ethics and feminist philosophy, as well as in tangential fields like nursing ethics; research ethics; disability ethics; environmental ethics, and social and political theory. This revised edition contains a new preface, a substantive postscript to Chapter 1 about "the subject of moral philosophy"; the addition of a new chapter on the importance of emotion in practices of responsibility; and the addition of an afterword, which responds to critics of the book.

Moral Understandings

A Feminist Study in Ethics

Margaret Urban Walker

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition Preface the First edition Part One. The Mis-en-scene: Moral Philosophy Now 1. The Subject of Moral Philosophy, with Postscript, 20072. Where Do Moral Theories Come From? Henry Sidgwick and Twentieth Century EthicsPart Two. Clearer Views: An Expressive-Collaborative Model 3. Authority and Transparency; The Examples of Feminist Skepticism4. Charting Responsibilities: From Established Coordinates to Terra IncognitaPart Three. Self- (and Other) Portraits: Who Are We, and How Do We Know? 5. Picking Up Pieces: Lives, Stories and Integrity6. Career Selves: Plans, Projects, and Plots in "Whole Life ethics"7. Made A Slave, Born a Woman: Knowing Others' Places8. Unnecessary
Identities: Representational Practices and Moral RecognitionPart Four: Testing Sight Lines 9. The Politics of Transparency and the Moral Work of Truth10. Peripheral Visions, Critical PracticeEpilogue: Some Questions About Moral Understandings Notes Bibliography

Moral Understandings

A Feminist Study in Ethics

Second Edition

Margaret Urban Walker

Author Information

Margaret Urban Walker is Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University. She is author of Moral Contexts and Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations After Wrongdoing, and editor of Mother Time: Women, Aging and Ethics and Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, with Peggy DesAutels.